About

With only 94 square miles of land, Mathews is one of the smallest of Virginia's counties. It was originally delineated c. 1651 as Kingston Parish within neighboring Gloucester County. In 1791, the Virginia General Assembly designated it as a separate county and named it for a prominent American Revolutionary War officer, General Thomas Mathews of Norfolk. The first court building in the newly formed Mathews County was designed and built by William Brown and Richard Billups circa 1792. In 1835, this building was constructed to replace the old court building. This important antebellum courthouse in a charming courthouse square has an unusual architectural design. In 2005, a new court building was constructed north of the village at Liberty Square.